


up in the air

by boatstoesta



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Yes I Tagged the Bear Trap, bear trap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23862379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boatstoesta/pseuds/boatstoesta
Summary: Set during the retreat—It's late. Beca and Chloe are arguing outside of the tent when they walk off and both get pulled into a bear trap. The Bellas leave them there to make up so come morning, they can finally rediscover their sound.
Relationships: Chloe Beale & Beca Mitchell, Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell
Comments: 29
Kudos: 198





	up in the air

**Author's Note:**

> I laughed really hard when titling this. Sorry, please continue.

Lying in the tent with the rest of the Bellas, Beca was only mildly panicking at the realization that the amount of bear traps on this property was indicative of a greater bear problem, and that their tent could very well be a great source of interest for said bears.

She felt Chloe roll toward her. She turned to face her, too.

“What are we doing here?” Beca whispered sharply.

“We’re bonding. You seem so tense.” Chloe reached up and gently touched Beca’s forehead, brushing her hair back. “Do you need a back rub?”

She shook Chloe’s hand off. “Several body parts are rubbing my back right now, thank you.”

“You know, Beca, we’re very close, but I think this retreat is really going to let us discover everything about each other.” 

“Is that right?”

“You know, one of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t do enough experimenting in college.”

Chloe was doing that thing where Beca couldn’t tell how much of what she said was a game. It didn’t sound very joking.

She did it all the time. Lazy good nights. At the grocery store. While doing homework. Dancing at rehearsals. Chloe was always, always there, saying things that Beca didn’t know how to respond to. 

“You’re so weird,” Beca said, rolling over so she wouldn’t look at Chloe’s lips a third time.

She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to go home.

Her skin tingled where Chloe's fingers brushed her forehead. 

Even with ten other girls in the tent, Beca still felt her entire body reacting to the small touch. That was just as bad as all the things Chloe said. The way she made Beca want to do things she couldn’t and shouldn’t. 

It really wasn’t fair.  
  
Beca listened to Chloe's breaths. They weren’t slow and deep and even like they were when she fell asleep with her head in Beca's lap. She could feel them, though, ghosting the back of her neck.

It was intrusive—it made Beca think intrusive things. Like how Chloe’s breath might sound just a little heavier, just a little more of a gasp behind it. Or even worse, how Chloe’s chest might move against her own as she desperately sought air, lost in throes on top of her. How her breath might feel against Beca’s lips.

She bit the inside of her cheek. With a huff, she shoved her sleeping bag down and crouch-walked past the sleeping girls. 

“Where are you going?” Chloe whispered.

 _Away from you_ , she thought to herself. Away from your soft eyes and soft hair and warm breath.

“Nowhere,” Beca grumbled.

When she was out of the tent, she stood up straight and stretched. She walked over to a tree and leaned against it, letting a long breath out. 

Chloe was her friend. A naturally affectionate person. After four years Beca should be used to it by now. 

Right?

She heard the rustling of the tent. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Chloe climbing out and zipping it closed again.

Beca groaned quietly and closed her eyes. So much for creating distance.

“You okay, Beca?”

Beca felt Chloe’s reassuring hand between her shoulder blades as she walked up behind her. The words _experiment_ and _regret_ bounced around inside her skull like atoms buzzing around a molecule, and Beca pulled away like she’d been burned.

“Fine.” She cleared her throat. “Just needed a minute to, uh, breathe. You know, I wanted some air that’s less than 90% fart.”

It was such a weak lie. They both knew it. 

“Is there something you need to talk about?” Chloe asked. Softly, she added, “You can tell me, you know.”

Chloe, Chloe, Chloe. As if Beca would even know what to say. As if the feeling in her chest even had some sort of translation.

“I know, Chlo.”

A loaded silence hung in the air between them. The crickets did their best to fill it but didn’t quite manage. The wind rustled the leaves just so, but that didn’t help either. It was the absence of an honest word that filled the air, and no amount of white noise was louder than that.

“Is it something I said?” Chloe tried again weakly.

Beca squeezed her eyes shut. The last thing she wanted was for Chloe to think something was wrong with herself. There wasn’t. There was something wrong with Beca. She could feel her blood pressure rising, a feeling completely incongruous to the situation making her chest tight and fingers itch. She was suddenly overwhelmed by the need to walk away and remove herself from this situation. 

“Go back to bed, try to get some sleep,” Beca breathed, turning to look down the dirt path. 

And that’s really she planned on doing: looking. But then Chloe’s warm hand was on her arm again, and Beca’s feet were moving on their own accord. 

She would wait by the lodge until morning, and then the Bellas could find their stupid sound or whatever, and then Beca could get away from this god-forsaken retreat.

“Beca, you can’t just go walking off.”

For a moment she considered listening, but the idea of being back in that tent with her face inches from Chloe’s propelled her forward. The lodge. She would go to the lodge.

There were loud footsteps following after her, though. “Beca. Come back to the tent before you get lost.”

“I’m fine, Chloe,” she huffed, even though it was becoming more and more ambiguous where the path was. The light of the moon was growing weaker the thicker the woods around her became. “Go lay down, and tomorrow we’ll sing and stuff, alright?”

“Are you going to come back to bed with me?”

There. Chloe did it again, saying things that sounded way more intimate than strictly necessary.  
  
Beca looked around, vaguely remembering that the woods got more sparse the closer they were to the lodge, not denser. 

“No,” she said absentmindedly, stopping to take in her surroundings. 

A few more steps and Chloe was standing alongside her. “It’s the middle of the night, Beca, and you’re acting crazy.”

“I’m not acting crazy. I just have to use the bathroom so I’m going back to the lodge. Sue me for not wanting to use the side of a tent as toilet paper.”

Chloe laughed incredulously. “God, you really are a terrible liar.”

“Excuse me?”

“You were standing outside the tent and leaning against a tree deep in thought because you were thinking about toilet paper. Sure, Beca, I buy it.” She gestured between them. “This is why we’ve lost our sound, Beca. We don’t talk anymore. We don’t tell each other things, we keep secrets. And it’s affecting everyone.”

Beca opened her mouth to respond, but her words caught in her throat. She couldn’t tell Chloe that she wasn’t keeping secrets—Beca had been omitting details of her life, but that would be a flat out lie to tell her that.

A little croaking noise that should have been the start of a sentence left her throat, but instead, she just turned on her heel. “It’s not that deep! I just have to use the bathroom! Go back to the tent.”

“What are you running from?” Chloe huffed. “Beca, you can’t even see where the paths are.”

A stick broke under Beca’s foot and she flinched. “Jesus,” she muttered to herself. She squinted at the ground, looking for a clear way to go. 

Chloe’s hand ghosted her shoulder and it was the final straw. Beca started walking quickly in any direction that was away, not stopping until she saw any form of civilization.

She could hear Chloe following close behind, and then suddenly her hand was wrapping around Beca’s arm, beckoning her to stop. 

Their bodies slammed together- not by choice, but by a strong whooshing sound that was the side effect of the net that was flinging them into the air.

Beca shrieked at the top of her lungs, and the mass of limbs that she was a part of was swinging violently from side to side.

“Oh my god!” Chloe exclaimed. “Oh my god.”

“Holy shit. Are you alright?” 

“Yeah, I think I’m okay,” she breathed. “Are you?”

Other than nearly suffering a heart attack, the human that was crushing her, and the fact that she was hanging fifteen feet above hard ground? 

“Fantastic.” Beca let her fingers grip the netting.

“How are we going to get down?”

“I don’t know, Chlo, this wasn’t exactly on the itinerary.” Beca shifted. “Your elbow is crushing my boob.”

Chloe tried to move, but then her knee was just digging into Beca’s thigh. Beca grunted but said nothing.

“Guys?” Chloe shouted. “Hey! We need help!”

Beca rolled her eyes and squirmed a little, but joined in. “Help! Someone help us!”

Eventually she could see Stacie and Cynthia Rose walking toward them from a safe distance. Finally. Beca breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank god,” she muttered under her breath. “Guys, we need you to get Aubrey before I die up here.”

Stacie and Cynthia Rose stopped walking, still really far away, gave each other a look that made Beca nervous.

“You think I’m going to go trudging through the woods and risk getting caught in my own bear trap just to wake up Aubrey, an actual bear?” Cynthia Rose said. “Uh-uh.”

Beca’s jaw dropped. This had to be some sort of sick nightmare. “You’re kidding right?”

Nothing but silence. “Stacie?” Chloe tried, upping the sweetness in her voice.

She crossed her arms and shifted uncomfortably. “The Bellas talked it over in the tent and we all agreed if you two hadn’t been arguing you wouldn’t be up there... Sorry, Chloe. We’ll get you when the sun comes up. Makeup by the morning so we can find our sound, alright?”

They turned and started walking. Beca couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Chloe gripped the net desperately. “That’s really funny, guys. You got us, super hilarious. We’ll wait here for you guys to come back with Aubrey…” Chloe tried. “Guys?”

She was met with silence. Beca groaned. “Give it up, they’re not getting us down.”

“I can’t believe it,” Chloe said dejectedly. “We’re stuck up here until morning.”

Great. Beca always wanted to spend a night strung up in a tree. “You’re crushing me, dude.”

“Like I have a lot of choice,” Chloe muttered.

“If you’d stayed in the tent you wouldn’t be in this position.”

“How the hell is this my fault? You’re the one who couldn’t stand still and have a conversation like a normal person. Instead, you had to walk off the path and get us into this mess.”

“If you’re referring to yourself as a normal person, then you really are deranged,” Beca said.

“Sure, I’m the deranged one. Hey, let’s go romping through the woods! There are bear traps everywhere, but it’s fine! Apparently you’d rather take your odds with those than just talk to me.”

Beca pushed angrily at the net engulfing them. “Because you were talking about regre—” 

She clamped her mouth shut and let out a groan of frustration. 

“About what?” Chloe said.

“About nothing,” Beca said, shifting uncomfortably.

Chloe rolled her eyes, not that Beca could see. She shifted her weight to the side and pulled her ankle from a tangle in the roping. The shift in weight caused the trap to swing.

“Dude, stop moving,” Beca said.

“I was uncomfortable,” she huffed. She shifted her body so her shoulders were next to Beca’s and they were both facing the same way now, albeit with the netting forcing them together. 

“Like I’m not? You’re practically on top of me.”

It was true. They were a tangled mess of limbs no matter how Chloe tried to move.

Chloe got quiet and stopped. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry that’s so miserable for you,” she said, an undercurrent of rejection in her voice.

They were suspended in another loaded silence until finally Beca was the first one to break it. “It doesn’t... make me miserable.”

“Huh?” Chloe said.

“It doesn’t make me miserable. That's kind of the whole problem. Neither does you touching my forehead and being way too touchy-feely in general and...” she huffed, trying to stretch her legs, but the netting just brought them right back in, right against Chloe.

“What are you saying, Beca?”

“Jesus. Just... nothing.”

“Oh.”

They swung there in silence a little longer. “I’m just saying that you’re not the only one with regrets,” Beca murmured finally. “That’s all.”

“Oh,” Chloe said again. Her heart was pounding, but she was scared to say anything that might scare Beca off again. 

They adjusted in the netting, Beca praying the whole time the tree branch was strong enough to hold their weight. 

Chloe’s leg slid between Beca’s as she rolled onto her side. She slid her arm under Beca’s neck, knowing they'd have to find a way to fit together if they were stuck here all night. 

She tried not to think of Chloe’s chest pressed into her side, or the way she used Chloe’s arm like a pillow in a way that felt too natural to be right.

It wasn’t bad when you got used to it. Almost like a high-stakes hammock. 

“We don’t have to do that, you know.”

“Do what?” Beca said.

“Have regrets,” Chloe murmured. “We don’t have to have secrets, either.”

Beca’s face was already so close. It would be easy, too easy, to move in three inches and close the gap. Her heart was hammering in her chest. She tried not to think about how good Chloe’s hair smelled or how warm she felt, either.

Almost imperceptibly, Beca nodded. 

It was unspoken between them, what Chloe’s secret was. Why Chloe failed Russian Lit three times, why she couldn’t leave Barden.

Beca thought, maybe it was her secret, too. Maybe it was their secret together.

Chloe's hand reached out and slowly pushed a hair back from her forehead, taking a piece of leaf with it. This time Beca didn’t shake her off, didn’t dismiss her. She just kept her eyes pinned on hers, both loving and hating what moonlight did to Chloe’s eyes.

She felt suspended in time as Chloe’s eyes flicked down to her lips. Beca wanted to move, but she couldn’t. She was frozen.

Chloe didn’t seem to suffer from the same affliction. Her mouth was lowering to Beca’s.  
  
“Tell me to stop and I will,” Chloe whispered, her lips just an inch away. 

Beca couldn’t. She couldn’t ever ask Chloe to stop.

Her heart was pounding against her chest, begging for Chloe to close the gap, to make an inch stop feeling like a mile.

Taking Beca’s silence as an answer, Chloe did just that. Her lips captured Beca’s, and all Beca could do was let herself soften. 

She ran her hand up to her neck and pulled Chloe closer. She kissed her now how she had imagined kissing her all week, the way she imagined kissing her for too many years.

God, it felt good. Beca barely contained the moan that tried to escape, but she couldn’t stop herself from pressing her body impossibly closer to hers. 

Her lips felt so much different than Beca ever imagined. The way they fit with hers was like nothing she had ever felt before. 

Chloe’s lips felt smaller than she imagined, and somehow that made them fit all the better.  
  
The way she kissed was different, too. 

Nobody had ever kissed Beca like she was oxygen before, like she was sunlight and air. Nobody had ever drawn such hunger from her. 

Chloe was being intentionally gentle with her, not pushing too hard or fast. It drove Beca crazy—after all this time, all the nights Beca’s body screamed for Chloe, she wanted anything but gentle.

She let her hands snake up to Chloe’s jaw and pulled her closer, nipping at her bottom lip with a whimper to show Chloe how badly she wanted more, that it was okay to give her more. 

It must have stirred something inside the redhead. Her grip became possessive. Whatever she had been holding back was flowing freely now, her tongue finally drawing a moan from Beca’s lips. Her hands roamed over her body until finally they slipped down to Beca’s chest. Beca gasped when Chloe’s fingers found a stiffened peak beneath her tank top.

Chloe pulled back breathlessly. The irony wasn’t lost on Beca that imagining exactly that breathy sound was why she’d left the tent in the first place.

Closing her eyes, Chloe pressed her forehead against Beca’s. “We’re suspended in the air. In a literal bear trap.”

Beca couldn’t help but laugh at that.

***

Not long after the sun peeked over the sky, Beca could see the Bellas approaching the net. She groaned in relief, grabbing at the netting angrily.

“Let us down!! Oh my god. Someone get Aubrey. Do _not_ let Lily cut us down,” Beca instructed.

When they were finally lowered to the ground, they both groaned in relief. Beca stretched her stiff legs and rolled her neck. 

“Thanks,” Chloe said tiredly.

“I have to pee so bad,” Beca muttered. “Screw you guys for waiting.”

Stacie shrugged. “We just thought it might be... good for you to get some alone time. All the coded whispers in the tent were a bit much.”

“Whatever,” she grumbled, dusting off her legs.

Stacie moved in a couple of steps, looking at Beca with an eyebrow raised. “Dude, is that a hickey?”

Beca’s hand flew up to her neck. She glanced back at Chloe, who looked like she was trying to suppress laughter.

“You guys suck,” Beca said. She stalked off the bathrooms, but not without glancing over her shoulder at Chloe, who was watching her with a grin. Beca rolled her eyes, but she smiled back.


End file.
